I don’t think it’s a well-known fact outside of Japan but blogging is pretty big over there. As seen in one of the slide, there are more than 27 million hosted blog accounts across 68 services, according to a research [ja] done by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. WordPress userbase is growing too – especially in the past year.

The reason in short is that it’s a free and open platform to build upon. For example, a lot of people in Japan choose WordPress because of the availability of plugins that enables mobile device more accessible. And the strong community through WordCamps and meetups in addition to online interaction is helping it a lot as well.

I’ll write more about this topic and other presentations that followed (also on internationalization of WordPress) later. Now, I’m off to another day of WordCamp NYC!

Related:

On November 14th, I’ll be speaking at WordCamp NYC. My session will be about how WordPress Community is doing in Japan. Here’s the description from the site’s session page.

WordPress Community in Japan

Japanese use of WordPress is growing fast. The number of downloads has quadrupled in a year and half, and the number of local user groups has grown to 27 since April. This presentation will cover the blogging trend in Japan, how they use WordPress, WordCamps and meetups in Japan, differences and similarities to the U.S. community, and more.

This WordCamp is going to be huge! Not only it’s held over 2 days (14th & 15th), there will be over 50 sessions in 8 tracks. Sessions include hands-on workshops, advanced topics, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A sessions, CMS/BuddyPress/MU related presentations, and many more.

There will be a hacker room where you can “just code” with core developers (2.9 Bug Hunt will take place here).

I’m really excited to talk about Japanese WordPress community in a WordCamp outside of Japan. Blogging has grown to be a pretty big deal in Japan, and WordPress is growing steadily. Even if you aren’t exactly sure if you want to know about WordPress in Japan, I think you can learn a tip or two for expanding your open source project / business / blog internationally.

WordCamp NYC “regular” registration ends today! If you want to make sure you get a special event T-shirt, make sure to get your ticket before the end of day (EST)!